Congress Proposes New Contribution Limits For National Party Committees

Bloombergreports, “Right now, individual donors may give the national party committees up to $32,400 per year. The new proposal would allow donors to add gifts of up to $97,200 to each of three causes: presidential nominating conventions, building funds, and legal proceedings, such as recounts. That’s a grand total of $324,000 per year.”

Bloomberg‘s description of the proposal is correct with respect to the RNC and DNC. Under the proposal, national party committees (such as the RNC and DNC) could each establish a new segregated account for national convention funding, and all national committees (RNC, DNC, NRSC, DSCC, NRCC, DCCC, plus the recognized national committees of minor parties) could establish separate accounts for building expenses and recount/content proceedings.

The national congressional committees (NRSC, DSCC, NRCC and DCCC) would not be able to establish convention accounts, and would not receive the benefit of that additional contribution limit – thus, the “grand total” for each congressional committees would be $226,800 per year from an individual donor. (Note: Early reports of the new contribution limit provision included varying calculations of how much donors would be able to give. Some of these calculations were incorrect.)

Among other implications, this provision would allow the national committees to devote their “regular” funds raised (contributions up to $32,400) exclusively to electoral activities. As the Wall Street Journal notes, “The new rules wouldn’t only dramatically increase the amount individuals could donate to parties, but would again allow parties to raise money for purposes separate from candidate advocacy.”